Merchants, missionaries & migrants: 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian relations

Merchants, missionaries & migrants: 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian relations

Kessel, W.M.J. van

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Kessel, W. M. J. van. (2002). Merchants, missionaries & migrants: 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian

relations. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4734

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Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants:

KIT-Publishers

Sub-Saharan Publishers

Merchants,

Missionaries

& Migrants

300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations

Colofon

Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants. 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations was published on the occasion of the

celebration of 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian diplomatic relations. It is the outcome of the conference ‘Past and Present of Dutch Ghanaian Relations’, organized by the African Studies Centre (Leiden), which was held in The Hague on 7 November 2001. The book was a joint initiative of KIT Publishers and African Studies Centre.

This publication was sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants. 300 years of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations

I. van Kessel (ed.)

© 2002 KIT Publishers (Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam)

First published in Ghana in 2002 by Sub-Saharan Publishers, P.O.Box 358, Legon, Accra, in a co-publishing arrangement with KIT Publishers, P.O.Box 95001, 1090 HA, Amsterdam. ISBN 9988 550 77 4

(Sub-Saharan Publishers edition)

available in Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Europe, excluding the Netherlands

ISBN 90 6832 523 X (KIT Publishers edition) available in rest of the world

Editing English text: Forest-Flier Editorial Service, Alkmaar,

the Netherlands

English translation of ch. 3 and 11 from the Dutch by

M. de Jong, London, Great Britain

Design: Ad van Helmond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Lithography: PrePart, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Reproductions from books unless otherwise indicated

photographed by: I. de Groot, KIT Fotobureau, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Illustrations: KIT Publishers wishes to thank H. den Heijer

for his research

Production: Far East Productions, Soest, the Netherlands Printed in Singapore.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.

A past for future generations

Modern slave markets are highly mobile and situational, and discussions around the buying and selling of slaves are coded. Slaves remain the property of their master, subject entirely to his will, working long hours for no remuneration, with no access to education and no freedom to marry or to associate freely. They escape servi-tude not by exercising their ‘legal’ rights, but mainly through escape. The challenge before us today is to come up with strategies that would help overcome this tragic manifestation of human greed and insensitivity. The hope of freedom depends in real measure upon our commitment to the principle of the dignity of man.

The past was not so good. The present has been mutually beneficial. It is our responsibility to strive to build a future that is even more advanta-geous to our two countries. We must ensure that out of the ashes of that which was wrong, a new future blossoms, a future of which unborn generations of our two countries can be proud.

Dr Grace Amponsah-Ababio

Ambassador of Ghana to the Netherlands

Ghana and the Netherlands have come a long way since David van Nyendael paid his historic visit in 1701 to the royal court of King Osei Tutu of Ashanti as an envoy of the Dutch West India Company. From a trading relationship that focused on the exchange of Ghanaian gold, ivory, slaves and cocoa for Dutch textiles, weapons and consumer products such as the famous Dutch genever, we have advanced to a stage where the Netherlands has become one of Ghana’s most important development partners. It is my hope that this fruitful relationship will be intensified by way of increased Dutch direct investments in Ghana in the future.

The contributions in this book focus on the longstanding and occasionally intricate eco-nomic, political, cultural and human ties that have evolved between our two countries over the past centuries. The various chapters deal with central themes such as the slave trade, the cocoa trade, liaisons between European men and African women and present-day Ghanaian migration to the Netherlands.

Of particular concern to us must be the contin-ued practice of slavery under various guises in several parts of the world. The international media is replete with news of women and children being either lured or coerced into sexual bondage, child soldiers being forced into their vocation by adults who should know better, and children from poor families being sold into perpetual servitude.

Children of Anansi

The sustainable relations developing between Ghana and the Netherlands must involve chil-dren. Their stories and songs contain pearls of wisdom. Take for instance the Ghanaian chil-dren’s song about the spider Anansi:

‘Children of Anansi are we

and the wide world is our spider’s web. Love, longing and fate

send us to different points in this worldwide web. Where they bring us we find threads to grasp, threads to leave hanging and threads to let go.’

I hope the pieces in this book will show us which threads we should grasp, which we should leave hanging and which we should let go.

Given my job of shaping cooperation between Ghana and the Netherlands, both now and for the future, I often wonder what the past should mean to us today, how we should deal with it and how we can use it. As the Ambassador of Ghana has said: ‘we must learn to understand each other, we must respect each other and then we can work together’.

This certainly includes being aware of and acknowledging mistakes, because only then can we understand what has hurt or humiliated another. The slave trade, which has scarred so many people of African origin, is one example.

It was the Netherlands’ struggle for independ-ence from Spain that first took the Dutch to the Gold Coast. They initially bought pepper, ivory and gold there, but after they had conquered

forts on the coast and acquired colonies on the other side of the ocean, they also yielded to the temptation of the slave trade.

The presence of the Dutch at the forts on the coast of what is now Ghana sparked an interest in the lifestyle of the local population. The books Pieter de Marees and Willem Bosman wrote on the subject in 1602 and 1702 respectively are still of interest. Africans like Jacobus Capitein and the Ashanti princes Kwasi Boachi and Kwame Poku came to the Netherlands and became ‘ambassa-dors’ between the two cultures.

Awareness of each other’s background and history – and the efforts both sides have made to treat the other with respect – have provided the basis for the sustainable cooperative relationship to which I am committed as Director-General for International Cooperation.

I am interested to hear not only what there is to discover from oral history, but also how today’s Ghanaian migrants feel about Dutch society. I hope that the Netherlands-Ghana Tercentenary project will encourage Ghanaians living in this country to make their voices heard. Are they able to grasp new threads? What do they regard as important in relations between Ghana and the Netherlands? I am confident that our relationship is destined to be more than just a footnote in history.

Ron Keller

Director-General for International Cooperation at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs This preface is based

on the speech given at the conference ‘Past and Present of Dutch-Ghanaian relations’ in The Hague on 7 November 2001 entitled ‘Relations between Ghana and the Netherlands: more than footnotes?’

Table of contents

Introduction

Merchants, missionaries and migrants: an introduction | Ineke van Kessel 11

Part 1 Merchants and Merchandise

1 An overview of Dutch relations with the Gold Coast in the light of 19 David van Nyendael’s mission to Ashanti in 1701-1702 | Michel R. Doortmont

2 Merchants, middlemen and monarchs: Dutch and Ghanaians 33 in the Atlantic slave trade | Akosua Perbi

3 David van Nyendael: the first European envoy to the court of Ashanti, 41 1701-1702 | Henk den Heijer

4 Ahenfo Nsa (the ‘Drink of Kings’): Dutch schnapps and ritual 51 in Ghanaian History | Emmanuel Akyeampong

5 Cocoa trade between Ghana and the Netherlands: 61 past, present and future | Victor K. Nyanteng

Part 2 Missionaries

6 Jacobus Capitein: a tragic life | Henri van der Zee 73 7 Free to be a Slave: Capitein’s theology of convenient slavery | David Kpobi 81 8 Ghanaian churches in the Netherlands: religion mediating a tense relationship | Rijk van Dijk 89

Part 3 Voluntary and involuntary Migrants

9 ‘Brought up well according to European standards’: Helena van der Burgh and 101 Wilhelmina van Naarssen: two Christian women from Elmina | Natalie Everts

10 Maroons, futuboi and free blacks: examples of Akan immigrants 111 in Suriname in the era of slavery | Jean Jacques Vrij

11 The Akan heritage in Maroon culture in Suriname | André R.M. Pakosie 121 12 The black Dutchmen: African soldiers in the Netherlands East Indies | Ineke van Kessel 133 13 Reminiscences of the African community in Purworejo, Indonesia | Endri Kusruri 143 14 ‘We think of Them’: money transfers from the Netherlands to Ghana | Daniel Kojo Arhinful 151

Merchants, missionaries and migrants

An introduction

The title of this book – Merchants, missionaries

and migrants – covers the most important areas

of contact between Dutch and Ghanaians over the past centuries. The book grew out of the conference ‘Past and Present of Dutch-Ghanaian Relations’, which was held in The Hague on 7 November 2001 to commemorate three centuries of diplomatic relations between Ghana and the Netherlands. Scholars from Ghana and the Netherlands presented papers on a wide range of issues of mutual interest ranging from the slave trade to the cocoa trade, from the role of Dutch ‘schnapps’ in Ghanaian ritual to relations be-tween African women and Dutch men. The sub-stantial number of contributions on the Ghanaian diaspora, covering Suriname, Indonesia and the Netherlands, illustrates that Dutch-Ghanaian relations are not just a bilateral affair. As a testimony to the globalizing impact of Dutch-Ghanaian contacts, scholars from Suriname and Indonesia also contributed to the present volume. The conference was organized by the African Studies Centre in Leiden, in cooperation with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both of whom also contributed to this book.

The point of departure for the celebration of this tercentenary is a mission carried out in 1701-1702 by David van Nyendael, envoy of the Dutch West India Company (WIC), to Kumasi, capital of the emerging Ashanti empire. In fact, Dutch-Ghanaian relations go back even further, to the last decade of the 16th century, as related in Michel Doortmont’s chapter on the Dutch presence on the Gold Coast. Van Nyendael’s adventurous mission to Kumasi, which is de-scribed in Henk den Heijer’s chapter, has been chosen as a convenient starting point for a year of commemorations and cultural exchanges between Ghana, the Netherlands and Suriname.

Balance of power

Trade was undoubtedly the main reason for the Dutch to venture to the unknown lands of the West African coast. It was also the main reason for the people on the coast to welcome the new-comers. Portuguese traders had given Africans a taste for European merchandise, but their heavy-handed conduct had caused resentment. Traders from other parts of Europe added to the range of products available to the Africans, while increas-ing competition among European tradincreas-ing nations simultaneously increased African leverage. In the 17th century, the Gold Coast hosted five Euro-pean nations – Dutch, Danes, Brandenburgers, English and Swedes – who between them oc-cupied no less than 21 forts and castles. A unique feature of this part of the West African coast, which was to last until far into the 19th century, was the presence of numerous rival European nations who at best managed a precarious control over the immediate environment of their trading posts. While European powers were busy carving out empires in America and Asia, West Africa for centuries was the scene of trade relations that were heavily dependent on the voluntary cooperation of local partners. A pattern of shifting alliances developed between compet-ing European nations and various African states, in which both sides were aware of their interde-pendence. Business was perceived as a matter of mutual interest, but both sides persistently kept trying to change the terms of trade in their favour. The local balance of power determined the outcome.

One notable exception to the game of shifting alliances was of course Elmina, headquarters of the WIC in Africa, which from 1637 on was the ever-loyal ally of the Dutch. Ashanti, having established itself as the most powerful state in

Ineke van Kessel

African Studies Centre, Leiden

Opposite page: Allegory – an African maiden with the horn of plenty. Illustration from Johannes Blaeu, Atlas Maior, Amsterdam 1662.

the hinterland, became the third leg of this durable alliance.

A central feature of the charter of the Dutch West India Company was its monopoly on trading rights on the African coast. Dutch ships trading on their own, or on behalf of other committees of merchants, were considered illegal interlopers. The WIC’s ambition was to establish a monopoly over its West African trading partners as well, an endeavour that was doomed to fail. African states welcomed new trading partners, but had no intention of accepting them as overlords or granting them exclusive rights.

Following the example of the Portuguese, the Dutch concluded treaties with coastal states, stipulating the duties and obligations of the contracting partners. The very first such treaty was concluded in 1612 with the king and elders of the small coastal state Asebu. One of the oldest surviving treaties is the agreement drawn up in 1642 between Axim and Director Ruychaver on behalf of the WIC and the States General of the Dutch Republic, after the Dutch navy had con-quered the Portuguese stronghold of Fort St Anthony in Axim. In this agreement, the people of Axim declared that they would be the loyal servants of the Prince of Orange and the WIC, for now and for eternity. They would not engage in trading with any other European nation and vowed to extradite all Portuguese to the Dutch. All civil and criminal cases were to be brought to the Dutch commander of the fort, while the local headmen were entitled to their share of the fines. The Dutch and the people of Axim would con-sider each other’s enemies as their own enemy. The Dutch were entitled to one-fifth of the fish catch. On the other side, the local headmen were entitled to a toll for every Dutch ship that anchored off Elmina, and to a piece of linen per fixed amount of merchandise on these ships (Van Dantzig 1980: 36),

In Axim, the Dutch invoked the right of conquest as the basis for their claims, as they had evicted the Portuguese. But in Accra, for example, the Dutch position was much weaker. The

Portuguese had already left before the advent of the Dutch, and Accra was a more powerful state than Axim. Here was no question of Dutch jurisdiction or of taxation in the form of fish. In exchange for payments in gold, the king of Accra did promise exclusive trading rights to the Dutch, but the Dutch were in no position to enforce their claim to monopoly rights. Most treaties stipu-lated that the Dutch were to pay ground rents in fixed amounts of specified goods for the right to build and maintain a fortification, while they were also expected to make their contributions to customary festivities.

These ground rents were a source of much misunderstanding. The Europeans believed that they had purchased ownership titles to the land where they built their fortifications. But selling individual titles to land was a notion alien to African custom. In return for gifts and payments, African rulers ceded user rights to land where Europeans were allowed to settle and build forts (Daaku 1970: 49). This was to become a source of conflict in 1869, when the Dutch and the British decided on an exchange of territories without involving the local rulers. The Europeans consid-ered this a transaction between two owners of property, while the affected African populations were understandably infuriated: how could these Europeans cede territories that were not theirs in the first place?

Even if the treaties stipulated monopoly rights, African rulers insisted on their right to trade with others. The result was a frequent change of allies, as old friends did not deliver on their promises and new friends looked more promising. In the 1690s, the rulers of Asebu teamed up with the Fanti and the English against the Dutch, whose claim to exclusive rights in Komenda was thwarted by powerful local traders. Dutch-English rivalry was to continue until the 19th century. The Dutch used dumping practices, known as ‘cladden’, to undercut the English merchants and squeeze them out of the West African markets. This practice could also turn against the Dutch, as African merchants simply held up their gold and waited for better

bargains (Ratelband 1953). African traders soon found out that the Dutch would drastically lower their prices when an English ship appeared.

The African traders were known as ‘Akanists’, described by Olfert Dapper as famed merchants, ‘very clever in their trade, they (...) travel as unpartisan men through the lands of Sabu and others. (...) These big merchants are rich in gold and slaves and provide two-thirds of the gold which is annually collected by the Europeans on the Gold Coast’ (Dapper 1668: 458-9). In pre-colonial times, the Europeans never gained direct access to the gold mines.

Merchants and merchandise

What was the trade all about? In the WIC years, Dutch imports to Ghana consisted mainly of textiles, guns, powder, metal ware and alcoholic drinks. In this period, gold, ivory and slaves were the most important exports from Ghana, fol-lowed by products of less importance such as pepper and lemon juice. The Dutch also played an important role as carriers in the inter-African trade (Den Heijer 1997). The organization of the slave trade, in which Ghanaians and Dutch acted as business partners, is described in Akosua Perbi’s chapter. Alcohol, notably geneva, remains an important Dutch product in Ghana today, although Emmanuel Akyeampong’s chapter makes clear that its meaning has shifted over time from social booze to ritual drink.

Trade remains the core business of Dutch-Ghanaian relations even today. Nowadays, Dutch imports consist mainly of used cars, electrical machinery, textiles, mineral fuels, oils and processed food products, notably dairy products and salted pig feet. The major commodities imported by the Netherlands from Ghana now include cocoa, timber and aluminium. Victor Nyanteng’s chapter spells out the central posi-tion of cocoa in present commercial relaposi-tions. In the days of the WIC, both sides attempted to outwit the other with a range of cheating tricks. Ghanaians mixed gold dust with sand, added to the weight of ivory by pouring lead in the tusks and rubbed old or sick slaves with oil to give

them a healthy, shiny appearance. The Dutch sold inferior guns, made false folds in their bales of cotton, silk and linen to cheat with the length and diluted their genever with water. Tricks and all, the overall picture is that of a relationship between equal partners. The Dutch, who num-bered a few hundred at most during the peak years of the Guinea trade, were never in a position to impose their will and remained dependent on the cooperation of local partners.

Missionaries

During the centuries of Company rule, the Protestant Dutch showed very little missionary zeal in their overseas possessions and footholds. Ministers of religion sent out by the Company ministered only to the European personnel of the WIC, and perhaps to a handful of Euro-Africans, the descendents of European men and African women. One attempt to reach beyond the small European community and to cater for the spir-itual needs of the Africans ended in dismal failure, as is related in the two chapters by Henri van der Zee and David Kpobi on the tragic life of Jacobus Capitein, the first black minister sta-tioned in Elmina.

While for a long time Dutch Protestants had little interest in ‘converting the heathen’, the Catholic Church in the Netherlands by contrast would later become known for its extraordinary outburst of missionary fervour. Dutch missionar-ies and nuns swarmed out to Africa in great numbers, Ghana included.

By the last quarter of the 20th century, the tables were turned. The Netherlands had become one of Europe’s most secularized nations, while Ghana witnessed a flourishing of various Chris-tian churches, both old and new. Ghanaian churches, notably of the Pentecostal type, proliferated not only in Ghana but also in Dutch towns with a substantial Ghanaian migrant population. Ministers followed their flock to the diaspora, but the Ghanaian diaspora also feeds into religious life in Ghana. Older, established churches also participate in this reverse mission-ary effort. Thus, David Kpobi, the author of a

chapter on Jacobus Capitein, served from 1987-1991 as pastor in Utrecht on secondment from the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. The role of Pentecostal churches in moulding a new identity and a sense of self-esteem among Ghanaians, who often find themselves at a loss in the paper jungle of the Netherlands’ immigration policies, is highlighted in Rijk van Dijk’s chapter.

Voluntary and involuntary migrants

For better or for worse, the European presence in West Africa introduced Africans to other parts of the world. European merchants organized a massive forced migration of Africans to the New World. The Dutch were major players in this transatlantic slave trade, both as suppliers for the Portuguese, Spanish and British colonies in the New World, as well as for the Dutch colonies of Dutch Brazil, Suriname and the Dutch West Indies.

The destiny of Africans of Ghanaian origins in the New World is examined in two chapters on Suriname. The focus is on two distinct types of experiences. André Pakosie, himself a member of the Ndyuka maroons, examines the African legacy of the Maroons and the linguistic and socio-religious parallels with the Akan of Ghana. Jean-Jacques Vrij traces the destinies of individu-als, some of slave status, some emancipated slaves and some free blacks, who made their own careers in the unpropitious environment of a plantation colony.

More ambiguous was the position of the Africans recruited in the 19th century as soldiers for the colonial army in the Netherlands East Indies. The vast majority of these recruits was originally of slave status, but they were manumitted when entering army service. Moreover, in the East Indies they counted as part of the European contingent of the army, with conditions of service similar to those of Europe-ans. Although the recruitment venture hovers on the border between voluntary and involuntary migration, the Africans in the East Indies army experienced a rapid rise in social status. As described by Ineke van Kessel and Endri Kusruri

in two chapters on these ‘Black Dutchmen’, the African soldiers jealously guarded their European status and considered themselves somewhat superior to the native Indonesian population.

Over the centuries, individual people also migrated back and forth between the Nether-lands and Ghana. Early examples are discussed in Natalie Everts’ chapter on two Euro-African women in Elmina who experienced life in Amsterdam as well as in Elmina. Some of these early migrants acquired international fame, such as the slave boy Jacobus Capitein, who became a minister of religion, or the two Ashanti princes Kwasi Boakye and Kwame Poku, whose dramatic life story is the subject of Arthur Japin’s famous novel, The two hearts of Kwasi Boachi.

By the last quarter of the 20th century, these pioneers were followed by a substantial flow of young Ghanaians looking for job opportunities. Ghanaians became known as an enterprising immigrant community. Some settled permanently in the Netherlands, while others are saving their earnings hoping to return to Ghana one day. But nearly all Ghanaian migrants maintain intensive contacts with home, travelling back and forth, sending money, supporting relatives and often closely following the latest political develop-ments. Their contribution to the Ghanaian economy and the welfare of relatives at home is discussed in Daniel Arhinful’s chapter.

By the end of the 19th century, the Dutch connection had brought Ghanaians to all five continents: to North and South America, Europe, other parts of Africa and to Asia. Indeed, even to Australia. Travelling on foot across the continent in 1882, George Morrison, a young adventurous Australian, met an old gentleman in the middle of Australia by the name of John Smith. He described this new travelling companion as ‘a toothless darkie, a native of the Gold Coast of Africa, a cook by profession and one of the kindest, most considerate men it has been my lot to meet with’ (Pearl 1967: 30). As a young man, John Smith of the Gold Coast had enlisted on a Dutch man-of-war that was taking Prince Hendrik of the Netherlands around the world.

Thus John Smith became the first black man ever seen in Iceland, and after his maritime travels he ended up in Australia.

Aftermath

On the eve of the transfer of the Dutch Posses-sions on the Coast of Guinea to the British, Dutch scholar C.M. Kan noted in 1871 that the history of the Dutch on this coast makes for a dark page in Dutch colonial history. ‘While initially this history testifies to the fortitude and industry of our forefathers, later it provides testimony of more than usual cruelty, more than common narrow-mindedness, regretful neglect, both of our own interest and those of the local population, great immorality, indifference and egoism. Let us burn the historical records which tell about the Coast of Guinea, which ought never to be opened and never to be used for haughtiness or instruction’ (Kan 1871: 7).

Fortunately, his advice to burn the archives was not heeded. The rich documentary record enables us today to trace Dutch-Ghanaian relations over the centuries, not ‘in haughtiness’, but indeed for instruction. The prevailing 19th-century Dutch perspective on the Gold Coast was that of a failed colony, where the Dutch for centuries had made profits with the infamous slave trade without any efforts at local develop-ment. But this is a perspective coloured by the heyday of colonialism. The Dutch presence on the Gold Coast belongs rather to the pre-colonial episode, in which Dutch and Ghanaians inter-acted, traded and quarrelled as equal business partners. Even if the business indeed included the inequitable slave trade, this was basically a relationship between equals. In this book, published on the occasion of the Dutch-Ghanaian tercentenary, past and present come together, hopefully laying a solid foundation for equitable cooperation in the future.

References

Daaku, K.Y, Trade and politics on the Gold Coast 1600-1720, Oxford 1970.

Dantzig, A. van, Les Hollandais sur la côte de Guinée a l’époque de l’essor de l’Ashanti et du Dahomey 1680-1740, Paris 1980.

Dapper, O., Naukeurige beschrijvinghe der Afrikaensche gewesten, Amsterdam 1668.

Heijer, H. den, Goud, ivoor en slaven: Scheepvaart en handel van de Tweede Westindische Compagnie op Afrika, 1674-1740, Zutphen 1997.

Japin, A., The two hearts of Kwasi Boachi, London 2001. Kan, C.M. Nederland en de Kust van Guinea, Utrecht 1871. Pearl, C., Morrison of Peking, Sydney 1967.

Ratelband, K., Vijf dagregisters van het Kasteel Sao Jorge da Mina, (Elmina) aan de Goudkust (1645-1647), Den Haag 1953.

Note

For convenience sake, in this book we use ‘Ghana’ and ‘Ghanaians’ to refer to the area of present-day Ghana and its people, although these names of course only came into existence when Ghana proclaimed its independence in 1957. Similarly, ‘Dutch’ in the context of this book can occasion-ally include people from other European nations, as the West India Company, being a true multinational, recruited its personnel all over Europe.

Part 1

Merchants

,

1

. An overview of Dutch relations

with the Gold Coast

in the light of David van Nyendael’s

mission to Ashanti in 1701-02

changes in the hinterland during the second half of the 17th century, leading to the formation of larger and more powerful states. One of these new states was Denkyira, which by the early 1690s was in control of many of the gold-producing areas. When it incorporated the kingdom of Akanny in 1697, it established a virtual monopoly over the gold, ivory and slave resources in a large hinterland area. Instead of providing a stable environment for European trade, the Denkyira monopoly only gave rise to further disruptions.

The situation in Denkyira was not the only problem facing the Dutch. Further to the east, the Dutch trading posts in Senya Beraku and Accra had difficulties, too. Here the rival hinterland states of Akyem and Akwamu were the cause of disruptions in trade. The entry of Ashanti into the political arena in the closing years of the 17th century complicated matters even further. All through the 17th century, the Dutch – or other Europeans for that matter – had had little need to establish close contact with the hinterland states. As long as trade flourished and relations with the Akanist middlemen traders worked out well, the WIC was happy with the situation. In 1701, however, the situation had become so perilous that the WIC governor in Elmina, Joan van Sevenhuysen, decided to take the uncommon step of sending an envoy into the hinterland. In a letter to the WIC board, Van Sevenhuysen noted that Van Nyendael was being sent to Kumasi partly on the advice of the senior ‘Akanist’, the Akanist middlemen being the most important allies of the Dutch with regard to the hinterland trade.1 _{This suggests a strong bond and mutual}

trust between the two parties. The motive behind Van Nyendael’s mission, which put a priority on the political objective – (‘so that the

Introduction

The years 2001-2002 mark the commemoration of 300 years of diplomatic relations between Ghana and the Netherlands, looking back on the mission of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) official David van Nyendael to the court of asantehene Osei Tutu I in Kumasi in 1701-1702. The com-memoration of this event as a starting point in the relationship between two modern states is of course merely symbolic. Current relations can hardly be compared with those of 300 years ago, and besides, the Ashanti kingdom does not equal Ghana, nor does the WIC equal the Kingdom of the Netherlands. However, the WIC did – in its day – act as the representative of the Dutch Republic, the forerunner of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the historical Ashanti state is an important constituent part of modern-day Ghana.

This chapter will review the Dutch-Ghanaian relationship from the earliest beginnings in the late 16th century to the 20th century, in the light of the mutual interests of the African and Euro-pean partners over time. Before arriving at this broadly chronological-thematic approach, David van Nyendael’s mission is briefly discussed, highlighting its symbolic meaning for the relationship between Ghana and the Netherlands.

David van Nyendael’s mission

to Kumasi, 1701-1702

Van Nyendael’s mission came at a time when trade on the Gold Coast had been disrupted for several years, much to the chagrin of the Euro-pean trade companies on the coast, including the Dutch, as well as the Akanist and other middle-men-traders who acted as intermediaries with the suppliers in the interior. Trade stagnated because of a number of political and strategic

Michel R. Doortmont

University of Groningen

St. George Castle in Elmina as seen from the sea. From Vingboons Atlas (with maps of WIC and VOC; 1660). KIT Library, Amsterdam RF-202.

1. Algemeen Rijks-archief, The Hague, WIC Archives 97. J. van Sevenhuysen to General Board (‘Heren Tien’), Elmina, 16 November 1701.

warfare may end and trade be taken up again’), makes Van Nyendael first and foremost a diplo-matic envoy. The charter of the WIC did indeed provide for such an appointment, in the sense that the governor of the Gold Coast (or any other WIC governor for that matter) was not only the highest company official on the spot but was also the representative of the States General, the suzerain body of the Republic of the Netherlands at the time.

Van Nyendael’s mission heralded the begin-ning of a longstanding relationship between the Dutch in Elmina and the court in Kumasi, which was marked by an irregular exchange of envoys and representatives. Van Nyendael turned out to be the first of thirteen known Dutch representa-tives to the court of the asantehene in a period of 168 years. In time, the asantehene was to send his own representative to Elmina, too, emphasiz-ing the special relationship that had developed between the two parties, and that was mutually beneficial (Yarak 1990). But it was only in the beginning of the 19th century that new Dutch envoys made their way to the Ashanti court.

Van Nyendael’s mission to Ashanti stands out as an important historical landmark in the Dutch relations with the Gold Coast. From the late 16th century onwards, the Dutch had been interested in the Gold Coast for two reasons: commercial interests and strategic reasons. The economic interest initially focused on the gold, ivory, gum and other products the area brought forth. By extension, from the middle of the 17th century onwards the Gold Coast foothold also served as a trading headquarters for the slave trade, which started to extend further down the West African coast, east of Accra and all the way south to Angola. Van Nyendael’s mission of 1701-02 heralded the first European contact with the newly formed expansionist state of Ashanti. Because of the local growth of the slave trade in the 18th century, the nature of the European presence on the Coast changed. The relationship with Ghanaian peoples and states became more intensive, and in a sense also more exploitative. In the 18th century, the rapidly expanding

Ashanti empire became the main supplier of gold and slaves to the Dutch in Elmina, Accra and Axim. Secondly, the Dutch interest in the Gold Coast was inspired by political and strategic motives. This was true for the first establishment of the Dutch in the early 17th century, and remained the case for the full period of Dutch presence on the Gold Coast. For most of this period, the interests of the Dutch and the Ashanti coincided nicely. The landlocked Ashanti empire never managed to subdue the coastal Fanti states, but found a reliable coastal outlet in Elmina, where the Dutch provided a steady supply of European goods, including guns and powder. While the British – eternal commercial rivals of the Dutch – developed alliances with the Fanti states along the coast, the Dutch had secured friendly relations with the most powerful state in the hinterland.

Commercial and strategic interests

in the 17th and 18th century

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to establish themselves on the Gold Coast where in 1482 they constructed the castle of São Jorge da Mina (later called St George d’Elmina) in modern-day Elmina or Edina, the first European building south of the Sahara. By the mid-16th century, English and French traders joined them, all seeking the riches of the gold trade for which the Gold Coast became famous. Soon it became clear to the Europeans that the trade in alluvial gold, mined in the coastal area, was difficult to pen-etrate. The local producers kept it to themselves, so the Europeans had to tap the sources of gold further inland. This forced the Europeans to strike up alliances with local coastal merchants and rulers, who could deliver gold from the hinterland. A complex political situation devel-oped around the European coastal settlements, in which Europeans competed with each other – even to the point of launching armed skirmishes – and were assisted by local rulers, who were thus able to enhance their own political and economic positions. The settlements around the European forts grew into towns, which also

served as commercial centres for international trade and political trait-d’unions between the Europeans on the coast and the states of the Gold Coast inland. By the third quarter of the 16th century, the European presence on the Gold Coast had given rise to a new, urban, cosmopolitan society, with a unique political, economic and cultural outlook. The Dutch entered the picture in the mid-1590s.

Since 1568 the United Dutch Provinces had been engaged in a war with Spain, which was to end 80 years later with the formal international recognition of the Dutch Republic in the Treaty of Westphalia. After the merger of the Portuguese crown with the crown of Spain in 1581, the Dutch found themselves at war with Portugal as well. Blocked from the ports of Spain and Portu-gal, the traditional sources for the supply of salt, spices and oriental products, Dutch ships began to venture further south, to the Cape Verde Islands and beyond. The period after 1590 marked the successful entry of the Dutch in the field of economic and political expansion beyond the confines of Europe, making them, within half a century, a major player in the East and West Indies, to the detriment of Spain and Portugal.

The first Dutch encounter was accidental. Barend Erickszoon, a sailor from the Dutch town of Enkhuizen, lost his way when sailing to Brazil in 1590, and subsequently landed on the African island of Principe, where he was caught by the Portuguese. From information gathered during his captivity, he surmised that the Gold Coast would be a good place with which to trade. After his return to the Netherlands in 1593, he man-aged to convince some Dutch merchants to invest in a voyage to the Gold Coast to trade for gold. This voyage, with one ship, was successful, and Erickszoon’s return with a cargo of gold and ivory can be regarded as the start of Dutch business with the Gold Coast. More Dutch merchants joined in and soon organized themselves in trading companies, uniting their capital, strength and know-how. By 1607 almost all trade with West Africa was organized in this way. In the merchants’ own words:

‘The Dutch merchants, having considered and felt the molestation inflicted upon them from time to time by the king of Spain, have taken into their own hands the trade on the coast of Africa, along Guinea up to Manicongo.’ 2

Initial attempts to establish a general West India Company failed, but in 1621 the first Dutch West India Company was incorporated. According to the terms of an armistice with Spain, concluded in 1609, the Dutch government was bound to refrain from trading in any areas in the world occupied by Spain or Portugal. Because of this treaty, Dutch merchants were confined to areas which they considered not to be under Portu-guese control, namely the kingdoms of Asebu, Efutu and Komenda. However, the Portuguese in Elmina apparently used a broader interpretation of the treaty and persecuted all Dutch merchants along the Gold Coast, killing them when possible. The kingdom of Asebu, because of its friendly relations with the Dutch, suffered most. The Portuguese and their allies attacked them on several occasions, destroying villages and pillaging the countryside. In 1611, the king of Asebu, who had seen his trade with the Dutch grow considerably in recent years, invited the Dutch to build a military fortification in the coastal town Mouri.

The story goes that the king of Asebu sent two envoys to Holland to convey the message. However, evidence of this early West African embassy to Europe is slim. The historian J.K.J. de Jonge mentions the embassy, basing his remark on the instruction of the States General to the commander of the fleet that was to establish a stronghold in Mouri. The passage roughly runs as follows:

‘And he will travel to the place called Mouri, belonging to the territory of the King of Sabou [Asebu]. And arriving there, with God’s help, he will, with a number of competent men from the fleet, who are knowledgeable about the area and speak the language, present himself to that King of Sabou, congratulate him in the name of the Prince-Stadholder of the Netherlands on his offer

2. Account of the early history mainly based on compilation of sources by J.K.J. de Jonge, De oorsprong van Neerland’s Bezit-tingen op de Kust van Guinea, p. 7, from a letter written by the merchants and com-pany directors trading on the West Coast of Africa to the States General, c. 1607.

of friendly relations, his correspondence and good will.

Also conveying the reason for his arrival, being for the protection and security of the merchants in the country, and those with whom they trade.

To which end he will show that the States General are willing to entertain the proposal and request of his [i.e. the king’s] envoys, recently present in these quarters [i.e. the Netherlands], to build a fort or stronghold and to man it [with soldiers to act] against all those who want to offend, perturb, hinder or hurt either the trade or the king’ (De Jonge 1871).

The Ghanaian historian K.Y. Daaku mentions the envoys as well and names them as Carvalho and Marinho (Daaku 1970). The use of Portuguese names possibly indicates that these men were local Christians, or descendants from a Portu-guese (fore-)father who struck up a relationship with a local woman. The death of one of the men at Elmina is later reported in a WIC journal. The establishment of Fort Nassau at Mouri inaugu-rated the Dutch residency on the Gold Coast, which continued for the next 260 years. As the relationship with Asebu was established at government level, it can be asserted that official relations between Ghana and the Netherlands are now in their 390th year.

Now a struggle for the European hegemony over large parts of the Gold Coast ensued be-tween the Dutch and the Portuguese. After the incorporation of the WIC and the end of the armistice with Spain in 1621, the road was clear for open warfare. In 1625, the Dutch tried to conquer the strategically and commercially important Portuguese headquarters at Elmina, but were unsuccessful in the face of massive resistance by an army made up of Portuguese and local companies. In 1637, however, an expedition-ary force from Dutch Brazil conquered the Castle of St George in a concerted effort from both the sea and the land. From their new stronghold in Elmina, the Dutch overtook the Portuguese settlement in Axim in 1642, and subsequently

those in Ahanta, Boutri and Sekondi. During the 17th century, the WIC would acquire more possessions, mainly to the east of Elmina, such as Accra, Senya Beraku, Kormantin and Apam, to name only the most important.

From the 17th century onwards the Dutch established official and private relations by means of treaties and contracts with many local rulers and states. Most important, of course, were the treaties with the government of Elmina, originally a treaty with Elmina’s nominal over-lord, the state of Eguafo, just inland, and treaties with the overlords of the other main Dutch footholds: Axim, Ahanta, the chiefs of Accra and many others (Den Heijer 1997). With these contracts, the parties may have differed regard-ing the interpretation of matters such as owner-ship of land and land rent, as African and Euro-pean ideas about ownership of land were vastly different, but in practice this made little differ-ence. The Dutch – and other Europeans – had jurisdiction over a delimited area of land and specific legal matters, which the African parties accepted. In some cases money changed hands, or rent was paid, and in others it was not. Conflicts about the parameters of a treaty or contract were generally solved through negotia-tions. The regular renewal of contracts can be seen as a ritual performed by parties from disparate cultures, trying to establish common ground. And indeed, looking at the stability of relationships over time, it seems that common ground was found through the process of regular negotiations and renegotiations, oiled by the exchange of gifts.

A fitting illustration of the cordiality and equality between the parties at state level, and its preservation in local folklore, is to be found in Accra in the palace of the Nai Wolumo. Still to be seen today in the compound of the palace is a mural depicting the conclusion of a treaty of peace and friendship between the Dutch, repre-sented by the WIC governor Jan Pranger, and the Nai in 1734. The painting shows two hands, Pranger’s and the Nai’s, and the staff of office handed by the former to the latter. A hardwood

staff with engraved silver knob is kept in the palace and is brought out for official occasions. The engraving on the knob confirms the year 1734 and names the then commandant of the Dutch Fort Crevecoeur at Accra. The absence of open conflict between the Dutch and their African neighbours during the 17th and 18th centuries is indicative of the care with which relations were established and maintained. Local leaders were regularly invited to the forts and castle for discussions, and for the celebration of festivities. The Dutch contributed to local festi-vals in kind and money, and paid homage to local authorities. In turn, local leaders would do the same at the arrival of a new fort commandant or a new governor in their midst. These rituals were kept intact for over 200 years, adapted where necessary, and modernized in terms of the type and amount of gifts.

The slave trade was, of course, one of the important economic activities of the 18th cen-tury, requiring extensive regulation through negotiation. Much work connected with the slave trade was not only done by the slaves ‘employed’ by the West India Company, but also by local labourers (both free and slave). For transport, for instance, the task often fell to carriers and canoe men from the town, who were hired privately through contracts, usually co-agreed with the local governments. Local traders supplied food for the contingents of slaves who had to be fed while waiting at the assembly points as well as during the transatlantic voyage. The local communities provided many other services too.

As the trade cycle between the Netherlands, the Gold Coast and the Caribbean had a span of many months, the Dutch set up a detailed network to exchange information on supply and demand, between trading posts and incoming ships, and with boats and canoes travelling up and down along the West African coast as far as Sierra Leone.

The rise of Ashanti in the first half of the 18th century destabilized he political status quo in the region for several decades. Wars in the interior regularly upset trade in general, and it was not

until 1742, when the Ashanti defeated the state of Akyem, that peace returned to the area. From that point onwards, the Ashanti were also more able to control the trade routes, resulting in an increase in the volume of trade. The WIC itself had already lost its last commercial monopoly by then (it ended in 1734) and was unable to profit from the situation. Private Dutch slave traders took over and did good business for several decades. The end of the Company monopoly opened the doors for a whole new set of local traders. Many of them had close relations with the Dutch because they descended from pean fathers and African mothers. These Euro-Africans became a powerful group in the second half of the 18th century, especially in Elmina. Some entered WIC service, others established themselves as private merchants, quite a few became powerful. One such merchant was Jan Nieser, son of a German WIC official, who set up a large trading network along the coast and was active in Dutch as well as British territory. It was

23 An overview

men like him who benefited from the slave trade long after it had ceased to be of importance for the WIC and many of the European traders. It also brought them into conflict with the Europe-ans, who often complained about the ‘unfair advantages’ the ‘mulattos’ had because of their family networks and better information systems.

Another notable Euro-African merchant was Jacob Ruhle, also son of a German WIC official. Jacob went to school in the Netherlands, together with several of his brothers and sisters. On his return to the Gold Coast in 1769, still a young man, he started a career in WIC service, acting as a purchasing agent for several governors

(Doortmont, Everts and Vrij 2000). This gave him the opportunity to build up capital of his own, which subsequently enabled him to set himself up in business. By the late 1780s, he – along with Jan Nieser – was one of the wealthiest men on the Dutch Gold Coast, trading in slaves and produce, and managing a large family business in which his brothers and sisters took part, and which stretched from the town of Elmina along the Gold Coast to Suriname and eventually also to the Netherlands. In Suriname, Jacob had a direct interest in plantations through a sister and elder brother. After 1790 he built a huge estate in Elmina town, encompassing a country house and a plantation, where he experimented with all kinds of tropical products – perhaps already contemplating how to negotiate the coming demise of the Atlantic slave trade. By 1802 he had moved to Amsterdam, where he settled perma-nently, leaving the family business to be man-aged by his brother Carel and two of his sons. He remained in the Netherlands until his death in 1828, resembling by then more an upper middle class Amsterdam merchant than the Elmina slave trader he had been four decades earlier. Jacob’s commercial exploits provided his family with an income for several decades after his death, and the Elmina estate, ‘Buitenrust’, is still home to distant descendants and relatives.

The successful exploits of the local private traders were probably less harmful to the Dutch interests than some of the European officials

would have their superiors believe. They them-selves were at a disadvantage, but the extensive and well-organized trading networks of the Dutch Euro-African merchants and their local families were, in this period at least, still firmly focused on the Netherlands and Dutch trading firms. Their profits were reinvested in the Netherlands or in Dutch financial interests, and luxury products were normally also bought in the Netherlands. As we shall see, setting up a Euro-African trading network was not a prerogative of the Euro-African group alone. Dutch officials also had opportunities to join in.

Social life in Elmina in the 17th

and 18th centuries

Relatively little is as yet known about social life in the Dutch settlements in the 17th century. More evidence is available for the 18th century, enabling us to sketch a picture of social relations, especially in the largest community, Elmina.

At any given time during the 18th century, several hundred European officials, soldiers, seamen and skilled labourers lived in Elmina. With a lack of European women and an aware-ness that close familial relations offered impor-tant points of entry into commercial networks, it was only a matter of time before European men of all ranks and local African women came together and set up house and shop in the town.

When one visits Elmina Castle today, the tourist guide will tell a story of how, during the slave-trade era, the governor or another high-placed official would pick young slave girls from the female dungeons and sleep with them. When a girl became pregnant, she would then be freed and would settle in the town. Her offspring would be named after the European father, hence the large number of Dutch (and English and Danish) family names still in existence in Ghana. This rather emotive story, in itself illustrative of the horrors of the slave trade, is historically false. There can be no doubt that female slaves were indeed taken as concubines for one or more nights by all European staff who had access to them; violent oppression, physical as well as

sexual, was inherent to the system of the slave trade. On the other hand, one has to keep in mind that slaves were trade goods, and damaged trade goods fetch less money. This fact will have made the men in charge very careful in their treatment of the slaves, limiting access to females by the lower staff. Also, it is highly unlikely that many slave women stayed long enough in the castle for the men to find out whether they were pregnant. And even in such cases, pregnancy by a European man would almost certainly never have led to manumission. Those unfortunate women were without doubt sold overseas, just as their fellow victims were. So who then are these Ghanaians with Dutch names? How did this group come into being? Most of the well-known Ghanaian families with Dutch surnames stem from voluntary alliances – marriages – between Dutch officials and daugh-ters of local (elite) families. Forging an alliance through customary marriage was mutually beneficial to the Ghanaian elite families and Dutch officials alike. During the slave-trading era, such marriages gave WIC officials access to a vast family network with economic and social ties, often reaching far into the hinterland

(Doortmont, Everts and Vrij 2000).

An example of such a successful and profit-able marriage is that of Dutch WIC official Pieter Woortman and his African common-law wife Afodua. Woortman first arrived on the Gold Coast in 1721 as a soldier with the WIC. When he retired to the Netherlands nine years later, he had seen a successful career as fort commandant and acting military commander. While in the Nether-lands, he set up his own business and married a Dutch lady, with whom he had several children. In 1741 he decided to return to the Gold Coast and WIC service, most likely because of some financial mishap. His former local experience made him an ideal candidate for an administra-tive position. Very soon he was appointed to the position of fort commandant in Apam, one of the slave-trading terminals east of Elmina. While stationed there, he met Afodua, a member of a prominent family in her hometown of Jumba,

near Apam. Woortman and Afodua were able to run a very profitable private slave-trading operation, at times undercutting the British trade. Woortman was apparently quite happy with the situation, and for a very long time did not try to improve his position by applying for a more prominent posting. When

he eventually did, he rose to the position of governor within four years. Over time, Woortman was joined by two of his sons from his Dutch marriage, Jan and Hendrik Woortman, who also acquired WIC positions and entered into the business owned by their father and Afodua. Later on, the children from the relationship of Pieter and Afodua – carrying the surname Plange, after

Woortman’s mother – also entered into business and kept it going until long after

Woortman’s death in 1780. Pieter Woortman and his Jumba family-in-law played the slave-trading

game quite well. Woortman carefully used his WIC position and connections to build up his own business. Afodua and her family provided the hinterland contacts and organized access to local infrastructure. Pieter Woortman’s Dutch sons on the Gold Coast followed in their father’s social footsteps and also married local women, extending the family network even further.

The example of Pieter Woortman can be replicated by many others. Euro-African relations did not exactly follow fixed patterns. Relation-ships between European men and local women were on the whole quite stable, and were socially acceptable for all parties. Regularly children were sent to the Netherlands for schooling. These Euro-African relations belonged to the social fabric of cosmopolitan coastal towns such as Elmina. In the 18th century Elmina already had well over 10,000 inhabitants and at some point grew to 20,000, outsizing many important European towns in the same period.

25 An overview

Portrait of Euro-African merchant F. I. Dolphijn at Elmina. He died in 1895.

unfortunate, but better forgotten quickly. While many Dutchmen adapted reasonably well to local conditions thanks to their integra-tion in African family networks, life could also be lonely and depressing. Life on the Ghana coast was particularly difficult for the ministers of religion who were occasionally dispatched by the WIC. Their mission was confined to ministering to the Europeans and sometimes the Euro-Africans. The Calvinist Dutch showed very little missionary fervour in their overseas possessions. The most tragic example of a Christian minister who could not manage the straddling act be-tween Calvinist morals and African mores is perhaps Rev. Jacobus Capitein, the first African minister at Elmina. The story of his extraordinary career is told in two chapters elsewhere in this book.

Many ordinary men had similar difficulty negotiating the huge cultural gap between Europe and West Africa, and drowned their sorrows in liquor, probably the most common cause of death among Europeans after tropical disease. But, as illustrated in the chapter on Euro-In a sense, these strong social contacts made

up for the weak political and military position of the Dutch. From the beginning, the local and the Dutch authorities developed a system in which the jurisdictions of ‘Castle’ and ‘Town’ were clearly delimited, and where official relations were marked by formal and informal negotiations and contracts.

Occasional incidents happened, to be sure, but these did not upset the basic consensus between Dutch and local Africans. The murder of Acting Governor Hoogenboom in 1808, for example, caused remarkably few ripples.

Hoogenboom had apparently offended the locals, and when he refused their demand to pay a fine he was attacked and killed while playing billiards in the officers club in town. The Dutch at the time were extremely powerless, as Elmina was isolated from the Netherlands because of the Napoleontic wars. But the point can also be made that the murder was regarded as justifiable in social terms, and for that reason the Dutch did not pursue the matter. In other words, consensus had it that the killing of Hoogenboom was

Merchants, Missionaries and Migrants 26

African women in Elmina, quite a few Europeans on the Coast enjoyed a normal family life.

Specific to Dutch-Ghanaian social relations on the Gold Coast is the way in which both parties used the available judicial systems (Doortmont and Everts 1997). Local families were quite willing to make use of the Dutch administrative system to regulate and agree upon issues like probate or ownership of land. The specific and well circumscribed local customs were happily combined with a system of registration and administration rooted in Dutch law. This worked well because of the system of intercultural negotiation and consensus discussed above. On the other hand, the Dutch authorities fully recognized the local judicial systems and did not hesitate to defer to them.

The 19th century: a decaying

interest

For the Dutch presence on the Gold Coast, the 19th century actually started in 1791 with the dissolution of the WIC. The WIC itself had already lost most of its commercial importance several decades before, when the trade monopoly was given up and Dutch private slave traders took over the business. By 1790 the WIC was bankrupt and its possessions were subsequently taken over by the State, which continued the administration more or less unchanged.

By the late 1780s the financial position of the Dutch government in Elmina had become so precarious that the governor felt compelled to appeal to the local merchants to assist the government with huge loans. On the whole, the Elmina merchants reacted sympathetically to this appeal, thereby safeguarding the continuity of the Dutch administration. An eyewitness report for the period between 1802 and 1810 by the Dutch Secretary to the Government during this period, J.A. de Marrée, describes a very pedes-trian life in a society which had lost much of its outward looking, cosmopolitan character (De Marrée 1817-1818). Governor Abraham de Veer, who arrived in Elmina in 1810, undertook an attempt at administrative revival. During his

term of office, Elmina was threatened with an attack by the Fanti, which was repelled – causing a renewed sense of solidarity in the Elmina community. Things were not as they were before, however, as a mutiny by the Elmina garrison showed. De Veer was able to suppress it, but it was indicative of the weak state of the Dutch government and diminished mutual understand-ing between the Dutch and the Gold Coasters.

De Veer wrote a report on the desperate state of affairs on the Gold Coast, and the new Dutch king, Willem I, decided to act positively and put forward a large subsidy to ‘stimulate both trade and cultivation’ on the Gold Coast. The area was designated as a free trade area, and the officials were encouraged to set up private businesses to enhance economic development. The king appointed Hendrik Willem Daendels as the new governor. Daendels was a colourful and contro-versial figure, a leader of the original resistance against the ancien régime in the Netherlands in the 1780s, a former governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, and a general in Emperor Napoleon’s army. His anti-monarchist past was no asset now that the Dutch Republic had been turned into the Kingdom of the Netherlands. For this reason perhaps he was sidelined to the unenviable position of Governor of the Nether-lands Possessions on the Coast of Guinea, the new name for the Dutch footholds on the Ghana-ian coast.

Daendels’ governorship of the Gold Coast was short but marked by a frenzy of activities. The abolition of the slave trade by the Dutch in 1814, following the British abolition in 1807, forced Daendels to experiment with new types of activities, mainly in the development of planta-tion agriculture. Daendels started a business of his own on the Gold Coast in which private and public affairs were mixed (Van ‘t Veer 1963; Zappey 1969). His actions led to complaints from other Dutch officials, who saw their own trading activities hampered by his monopoly. Local Elmina merchants were not happy either. Jan Nieser – formerly an important slave trader – was put out of business by Daendels. One of the

most powerful Euro-African merchants of the period between 1780 and 1820, he was now indeed quite desperate. In 1818, the situation had deteriorated so much for Nieser that he started to wage outright war against the Daendels regime and its Elmina allies, going so far as to ambush Dutch military patrols with his own army of slaves.

Daendels started constructing a modern trade road to Kumasi, after the example of the Post Road he built across Java several years before. In the field of diplomacy, a concerted effort was made to re-affirm the relationship with the Ashanti court by posting a resident representa-tive in Kumasi. All efforts came to nothing, as Daendels died after only two years in Elmina, in May 1818. He succumbed to yellow fever, the great killer of Europeans.

The Dutch government used the opportunity of Daendels’ death to minimize the Dutch presence. The number of Dutch officials was limited to a mere handful of men. The subsidy for the upkeep of the possessions was drastically reduced, leading to the reorganization of the garrison (henceforth consisting of local men only), the wholesale dismissal of the government slaves in favour of occasional hired labour, and the ‘closure’ of most of the forts. For their income, the Dutch officials on the Gold Coast in the 1820s and 1830s had to rely on private trade, which they were allowed to pursue, especially when stationed at one of the outer forts (i.e. outside Elmina). In the mid-1820s the option of leaving the Gold Coast altogether came up in official documents for the first time, and it would remain a political issue until it finally happened in 1872.

During the following decades the form of the Dutch administration was altered several times, mostly in reaction to external events. The most dramatic change came in 1838, when several Dutch officials, including the young, inexperi-enced acting governor and the military comman-dant, were killed in Ahanta (near Boutri in the western Gold Coast) in skirmishes with the rebel king of Ahanta. The episode showed the absolute

weakness of the Dutch administration on the Gold Coast. The ministry in the Hague took action and sent an expeditionary force under the command of General J. Verveer, who quickly quashed the Ahanta revolt with the help of local allies. The administration was reorganized and somewhat strengthened. In the same period (1836-1838), Verveer went on a mission to the court of the asantehene in Kumasi to negotiate a contract for the delivery of army recruits to Elmina for military service in the Dutch East Indies (Tengbergen 1839).

In the 1860s, the administration was reorgan-ized in the light of an exchange of properties with the British, leaving the Dutch all British territories to the west of Elmina, and the British all Dutch possessions to the east of Cape Coast. The British in particular regarded the consolida-tion of their jurisdicconsolida-tions as a way to enforce customs duties and thereby to generate income to cover part of the costs for the British adminis-tration.

The exchange of territory caused much political upheaval. The Fanti of the British hinterland, in cooperation with a number of leading British Euro-Africans, set up the Fanti Confederation in 1867, an effort at an independ-ent European type governmindepend-ent, to counterpoise the nascent British colonialism in the area. Within the new Dutch territory local populations resisted the exchange, too, especially in British Komenda. Eventually the unrest and revolts led to war, whereby Elmina was beleaguered in April and May 1869 by an African army of over 20,000 men. The Dutch garrison counted less than a hundred men. The threat was repelled with the assistance of local Elmina troops, who sided with the Dutch – as they had done many times before – and a small expeditionary force from the Netherlands that was already present (Van Braam Houckgeest 1870). The exchange of territory became the local stepping stone to the definitive departure of the Dutch in 1872.

In economic terms, the period between 1820 and 1872 was of limited importance for Dutch-Ghanaian relations. The heydays of the slave

trade were gone, and in the 1820s there was still little to replace this lucrative trade. It would take another decade before the replacement staple of the international West African trade took off: palm oil, used as an all purpose oil (for lubrica-tion, and as a base product for soap, candles and margarine) in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and soon afterwards elsewhere in Europe. Apart from palm oil produc-tion, the Dutch areas saw a growth in secondary activities such as logging and casket production in the western forest areas, as well as the provi-sion of storage space and transport for the palm oil. From the 1840s onwards, the Rotterdam trading firm of H. van Rijckevorsel & Co. claimed a virtual monopoly on the Dutch trade with the Dutch Gold Coast. The firm normally used the Dutch governor and one or more fort comman-dants as its local agents to run the trade for them. On the African side, the leading mercantile families of Elmina, Accra and Cape Coast increas-ingly came to dominate the commercial activities along the coast. The importance of Britain became such that many Elmina families sent their children to school in Cape Coast, and by the 1850s English was being used as the commercial lingua franca.

Efforts to make the possessions on the Guinea Coast commercially viable failed miserably. The only successful enterprise the Dutch government set up was the recruitment of soldiers for the Netherlands East Indies army, a venture that is discussed elsewhere in this book. For a while the recruitment of soldiers was a reason to hold on to the possessions on the Gold Coast. The costs of the recruitment operation were covered by the budget of the Netherlands East Indies govern-ment, which thereby in effect subsidized the Netherlands Possessions on the Gold Coast.

Departure and after

The final departure of the Dutch from the Gold Coast in 1872 cannot, in retrospect, be regarded as a surprise. The Danish had sold their posses-sions to the British in 1850, leaving the Nether-lands and Great Britain as the only European

powers. At that time both had limited colonial aspirations in West Africa, but there was a genuine wish on both sides to work towards closer cooperation. By 1867 the two governments had decided that an exchange of territories was the answer to the modernization question. When implemented, however, the measure caused an earthquake in the otherwise so peaceful and sedate relations between European and African authorities. The British community at Komenda declared itself the arch-enemy of the Dutch, and the government of Elmina showed strong resentment about the exchange, supported by the Ashanti, who witnessed the status quo of their relationship with the coast being upset (in a period when Ashanti-British relations were already extremely bad).

Soon afterwards, the government in The Hague decided to abandon its modest ‘Posses-sions on the Coast of Guinea’, which were increasingly regarded as a financial burden and certainly not worth a colonial war. Efforts by the Elmina government, who even sent a mission to the Netherlands to object to the proposed transfer, were to no avail. Eventually, the Dutch – rather suddenly – signed over the Gold Coast to the British on 6 April 1872. The Elmina authori-ties and population felt deserted, and riots broke out in the town. The town divided into two camps, one pro-British, one anti-British. Less than

29 An overview